By SUZANNE DOWNING
July 26, 2026 – While Dr. Anthony Fauci was one of the highest-paid officials in the federal government, newly released documents show that he was also collecting prestigious awards, some carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money. He had help from government employees and the very scientists whose research and institutions depended on funding from the agency he led.
The emails and ethics records were released Friday by Sen. Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, as part of a package titled “Fauci’s Side Hustle.”
The largest foreign award identified by Paul’s committee involved a wire transfer of approximately $900,000. Other prizes awarded during the Covid era added hundreds of thousands of dollars to Fauci’s compensation beyond his government salary.
The records show Fauci soliciting nominations, exchanging favors with prominent researchers, and relying on taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health employees to help assemble nomination materials and navigate federal ethics reviews.
One of those researchers was Dr. Barton F. Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and a longtime Fauci collaborator whose work received substantial funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, during the time when Fauci ran the agency.
In October 2018, Fauci contacted Haynes about several major scientific awards. Haynes nominated Fauci for the 2019 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine and confirmed the nomination by email.
Fauci thanked him and offered to provide any additional information he needed.
The correspondence then turned to the Heinz Awards. Fauci asked Haynes to nominate him for the award’s Human Condition category and discussed the supporting materials that would be required, including the nominator’s curriculum vitae.
“You bet!!! Let’s do it,” Haynes replied, according to the released emails.
They also discussed the Dan David Prize, although a nomination was postponed that year because the prize’s selected theme was not focused on science or medicine.
The exchanges expose a relationship between a researcher supported by millions of dollars in federal funding and the powerful official overseeing that funding system asking for nominations for prestigious and potentially lucrative prizes.
Haynes and Fauci had worked together for decades, dating to Haynes’ time at NIH during the 1970s and 1980s. Duke’s vaccine institute later became a major participant in federally funded HIV and vaccine-research programs, including large NIAID-supported consortia.
Other records show NIH personnel helping prepare Fauci’s award submissions. Fauci aide Greg Folkers and other federal employees worked on supporting materials, including a narrative prepared for a 2020 Dan David Prize nomination highlighting Fauci’s role in the government’s Covid-19 response and support for messenger RNA vaccine development.
Dr. Charles Dinarello, an immunologist and longtime Fauci associate, was also involved in drafting or reviewing nomination materials.
Senior NIH officials and agency lawyers helped process the awards. Dr. Lawrence Tabak, then one of NIH’s highest-ranking officials, and ethics personnel reviewed proposed prizes, sought expedited clearances and determined which cash payments Fauci could accept under federal ethics regulations.
Paul’s committee characterized Tabak as effectively acting as Fauci’s “personal awards manager.”
The records indicate that some awards were approved under ethics provisions allowing federal employees to accept prizes recognizing public service. Other cash components were declined, limited or otherwise restricted, including portions of the Lienhard Award.
The documents indicate that NIH and Department of Health and Human Services ethics officials reviewed the awards under existing rules. The newly released material does not include a formal finding that Fauci violated federal ethics laws, nor does it establish that he made a specific funding decision in exchange for a nomination.
But Paul’s release raises broader questions about whether the head of a grant-making federal agency should solicit award nominations from researchers whose careers and institutions may depend heavily on that agency — and whether federal employees should spend government time preparing materials that could result in large personal payments to their boss.
Fauci, now 85 years old, directed NIAID from 1984 until his retirement at the end of 2022. During the pandemic, his annual federal compensation climbed above $400,000, making him the highest-paid federal employee in the country at the time.
The award records are the latest release in Paul’s broader investigation of NIH, federally funded research and the origins of Covid-19. The committee has also published documents involving EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, discussions among scientists about a possible laboratory origin of the virus and contacts between public-health officials and the intelligence community.
Gabbard releases Fauci files with new Covid origins details
Fauci is scheduled to testify before Paul’s committee at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, July 29, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The appearance follows a subpoena and years of bitter public clashes between the two men over gain-of-function research, federal funding of coronavirus experiments and Fauci’s previous testimony to Congress.
The complete “Fauci’s Side Hustle” document package is available in Sen. Paul’s Reading Room. Details for Fauci’s upcoming appearance are posted on the Senate committee’s hearing page.
Linda Boyle: Will anyone ever be held accountable for the Covid years of deception and destruction?
Linda Boyle: Why should we still care about origins of Covid? Because the next scare is just around the corner
Naknek featured in Sen. Rand Paul’s Festivus Report that tallies $1.6 trillion in federal waste, debt dubious programs
20 thoughts on “Fauci’s side hustle: Emails reveal taxpayer-funded staff helped pursue lucrative cash prizes”
Fauci looks like, and acted like, the radical scientists who Hitler hired to conduct atrocious medical experiments on humans. Fauci should be hung from the gallows at sunrise, and his body donated to science as a rat subject.
Wholeheartedly agree. Add many to the list: Collins, Brix, Drazak and more.
But none of them – or the Epstien class- have faced any justice that they all richly deserve or was promised. It looks as if we were lied to. Again.
The wheels of justice may grind slow, but they do grind fine.
The Jews may have been my medically persecuted and tortured by way of medical experiments during WW2, but Fauci took it to a new level in 2020. The entire world was under his medical fingerprints. The Democrat’s hero.
Fauci worse than Hitler? That’s moronic.
Like the constant rants about Trump where he’s called ” worse than Hitler” he hasn’t killed people wholesale like Faucis,little science,fair project for his Chinese paymasters
Do the experiments on him first, no anesthesia, like he,did to dogs, then hang him, slowly.
Fauci’s look is sinister.
Textbook example of hubris. The wrath of the gods is forthcoming.
That was quite a hustle He and his cohorts engineered much like the very important viruses they worked so hard to develop. I will never forget his response to an early quote from Fauci when questioned about a lab leak. He said “the benefits of a killer virus far outweighs the risk of a leak”. Those were not the words of any Doctor but more likely the thoughts of a mad scientist with dollars bulging huge pockets for cash in his lab coat. It is no wonder President Autopen granted him a full pardon. It is quite possible Joe and “Dr Jill” were in on the cash haul as well. It is about as gross as the Minnesota “Learing Center” and endless hospice billing for seniors in California. At least Dr. Rand Paul has found a worthy target.
If you have not yet seen it, watch the documentary “Thank You Dr Fauci”
Produced by Angel network.
We can only pray there is a special place in hell that God has reserved for people like Fauci
So take away Fauci’s work, what additional million people in the United States do you want to die from Covid. Your neighbor, your barista, your fellow White Nationalist? So who do you want to let go of without the Covid intervention big guy? We can wait for your reflexive response.
Yeah, the people that his little plaything killed you seem to want to reward the arsonist for pretending to put out the fire he set. his work didn’t work out so well . a,leaky immunization, and all those kids with AIDS that he didn’t actually help, while taking the immense paycheck( and all those accolades) for his ‘ great work”
Damon, I beg to differ.
Fauci’s quarantine was the dumbest thing we could have done, along with the 6 feet distancing Fauci and his team simply made up. Did you know they initially wanted 10 feet for a modest reduction in droplet dispersion with a mask, but decided that no one would go for that, so the 6 feet rule it was. Then you had the lies about the vaccine of “you get it and you will not get Covid” which morphed into “you can still get it but it will be milder” when it became obvious that vaccinated individual still succumbed to the illness. Based on all my reading there is no proof that taking away Fauci’s work would have resulted in more deaths, instead if he and the NIH had not dabbled in illegal gain-of-function research we probably would have been spared the entire episode and saved millions.
It’s not the prototypical “mustached man” from the 20th century that gives me great concern. Their tyranny, oppression, injustice and evil was- is – made possible by people like you. They are just one person, but your type are many. You are the foot soldiers of doom and your type always has been. At least we all know where you are going in the end.
Fauci is an American hero and all republicans want to do is demonize him with their baseless conspiracy theories. The same people who caused so many needless deaths by making people doubt the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines. How many of you moron’s lost family and friends because you insisted they turn down the vaccine when it became available? I’m sure you memory hole that since it’s excruciating to think about. Well those folks are gone and we’re stuck with you knuckle draggers. If Rand Paul can release Fauci’s diary he can certainly release the Epstein files.
I guess that is why it was so important Fauci be granted a pardon from the Paymaster Autopen?
“Fauci is an American hero”
I beg to differ. Remember the AIDS epidemic? Fauci authored an article claiming that simply living in the same household as an afflicted individual spread the virus to all. The damage this did to the gay community was immeasurable. Infected individuals were cut off from by their loved ones or chose to distance themselves during a time they needed the support the most. People died alone because of him. This also shifted public opinion of the community from a weird fringe group to leper status. Sadly a view still held by some today.
Then the good doctor dabbled in gain-of-function and along came Covid with the quarantines, the school closures, the arbitrary distancing and masks mandates. While the media fawned over Fauci, our children fell behind in learning and social skills, people once again died alone and our economy faltered. He did not entertain ANY discussion of alternatives to the vaccine. Most of his recommendation turned out to be questionable at best.
As for vaccines, people don’t doubt the safety and effectiveness of ALL vaccines, just the mRNA Covid one, as it was over promised and clearly under delivered. This vaccine had no track record and history of side effects/adverse reaction and its boosters are generally at least one generation behind the current mutation of the virus. If you think that this vaccine is safe and effective the one person you should thank is President Trump as Operation Warp Speed made it all possible.
That you call individuals, who disagree with you by unflattering names, makes it clear that you have no respect for your fellow American, who had come to another conclusion and exercised their freedom to make different choice,……how sad!
Your statement “our children fell behind in learning and social skills, people once again died alone” – first I thought most of you Maga’s homeschooled your kids and as for people once again died alone – I thought you said it was “just a cold”? November is coming fast wiseguy!
Keep in mind that his wife was their ” ethicist”. Fox minding the henhouse? This is self dealing on a,huge scale. Using tax paid staff to do your personal award- begging. No conflict of interest there, right?? Using the power of government authority to quash adverse reports in the media AND scientific journals. Plus Constant whoring after press accolades. Dude’s a,malignant narcissist.